http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RomanEmpire_117_recoloured_2.svg

Colosseum

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colosseum_II.jpg

Amphitheaters around the Empire

Roman Empire Outline: http://awmc.unc.edu/

Pause for Themes, Terms and Questions

• What is Digital Humanities?
• ~“The use of computers to analyze and present digital represenatations of human activity.”??
• George Box: “Essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.”
• Big Data?
• For this evening: Visualization, Network Analysis, and the Open-Source Tools that support these approaches.
• Big data for pre-contemporary societies is hard as our subjects aren’t generating information about themselves. As in, they don’t tweet.
• Another theme: http://github.com/sfsheath/roman-amphitheaters & http://github.com/sfsheath/cawd
• I am also sharing this presenatation itself. http://sebastianheath.com/cawd/inst/rmarkdown/bigslow.html (Rmarkdown source )
• By sharing the source I mean to evoke “Reproducible Research”
• And the parts that are original are available under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
• One last thing: This is the first time I’ve used RMarkdown to author slides so let’s see what happens…

Many sizes

RStudio

http://www.r-project.org & http://rstudio.org

Media Rich (Google)

Assisi in Italy (Maximum dimension not known? Arena 65 x 38 Meters)

Media Rich (Google)

Carsulae in Italy (84 x 62 Meters)

Gladiators, Beast Hunts and Executions

The Zliten (Libya) Mosaic (C. 2nd Century AD?)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Bestiarii.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Circus_Leptis_Magna_Libya.JPG/1024px-Circus_Leptis_Magna_Libya.JPG

Many sizes… but not all shapes

“Media Rich” (Nimes)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Arena_of_Nimes_2_HDR.jpg

“Media Rich” (Nimes)

“Media Rich” (Trier)

Public Information

http://www.maumburyrings.co.uk or “Peak Amphitheater”

How many amphitheater seats were there?

ramphs.all <- ramphs
ramphs.all.sp <- ramphs.sp

ramphs <- ramphs[ramphs$include,]
ramphs.sp <- ramphs.sp[ramphs.sp$include,]
  
ramphs$imputed.capacity <- NA
ramphs$imputed.capacity[!(is.na(ramphs$capacity))] <- ramphs[!(is.na(ramphs$capacity)),]$capacity

lm.imp.1 <- lm ( capacity ~ latitude +
                   ext.major + ext.minor + arena.major +
                   arena.minor + arena.major:ext.minor + arena.minor * ext.minor,
                data=ramphs )

pred.1 <- predict (lm.imp.1, ramphs)
ramphs$imputed.capacity <- ifelse (is.na(ramphs$capacity), pred.1, ramphs$capacity)

lm(capacity ~ ext.major, ramphs[(ramphs$ext.major < 120) & (ramphs$ext.major > 50),]) -> lm.ext.major
ramphs$imputed.capacity[(!is.na(ramphs$ext.major)) & (is.na(ramphs$imputed.capacity))] <- ramphs$ext.major[(!is.na(ramphs$ext.major)) & (is.na(ramphs$imputed.capacity))] * lm.ext.major$coefficients[2]

length(ramphs$imputed.capacity[is.na(ramphs$imputed.capacity)])

## [1] 74

ramphs$imputed.capacity[is.na(ramphs$imputed.capacity)] <- 5000

sum(ramphs$imputed.capacity)

## [1] 2270850

With many thanks to Katie Anderson of NYU Libaries Data Services who is in no way responsible for my (mis?)use of her work.

Where are the amphitheaters seats?

Spatial History

R. White. What is Spatial History? Spatial History Lab: Working paper; Submitted 1 February 2010;

Paragraph 36 (emphasis author): “One of the important points that I want to make about visualizations, spatial relations, and spatial history is something that I did not fully understand until I started doing this work and which I have had a hard time communicating fully to my colleagues: visualization and spatial history are not about producing illustrations or maps to communicate things that you have discovered by other means. It is a means of doing research; it generates questions that might otherwise go unasked, it reveals historical relations that might otherwise go unnoticed, and it undermines, or substantiates, stories upon which we build our own versions of the past.”

Calculating Distances

Who should know how to do this?

#generate distances of all amphitheaters to all other amphitheaters
ramphs.dists <- spDists(ramphs.sp,ramphs.sp,longlat = TRUE)

# but let's use names
colnames(ramphs.dists) <- ramphs$id
rownames(ramphs.dists) <- ramphs$id

# Would be nice to have a d.f in the form from,to,km
as.data.frame(ramphs.dists) -> ramphs.dists.df

#add column of names, in anticipation of using gather()
cbind(from = ramphs$id,ramphs.dists.df) -> ramphs.dists.df

gather(ramphs.dists.df, to, km, 2:dim(ramphs.dists.df)[2]) -> ramphs.dists.df

# data now in nice columns but...
# we still have the 0Km rows.
#set phasers to kill...
ramphs.dists.df[ramphs.dists.df$km > 0,] -> ramphs.dists.df

The Data

Amphitheaters Closer <= 80 Km.

As a Network

Bigger Labels

Degree

http://www.slideshare.net/gcheliotis/social-network-analysis-3273045

##    Min. 1st Qu.  Median    Mean 3rd Qu.    Max. 
##   1.000   1.000   3.000   6.393  10.250  21.000

High Degree

# print the top quartile
V(close.amphitheaters.nw)[degree >= summary(V(close.amphitheaters.nw)$degree/2)[5]]

## Vertex sequence:
##  [1] "ludusMagnusArena"                 "romeFlavianAmphitheater"         
##  [3] "romeAmphitheatrumCastrense"       "cumaeAmphitheater"               
##  [5] "pozzuoliFlavianAmphitheater"      "pozzuoliEarlyAmphitheater"       
##  [7] "carthageAmphitheater"             "hadrianVillaAmphitheater"        
##  [9] "paestumAmphitheater"              "casinumAmphitheater"             
## [11] "luceriaNoukeriaAmphitheater"      "avellaAmphitheater"              
## [13] "oudnaAmphitheater"                "carsulaeAmphitheater"            
## [15] "ocriculumAmphitheater"            "arezzoAmphitheater"              
## [17] "larinumAmphitheater"              "lucusFeroniaeAmphitheater"       
## [19] "allifaeAmphitheater"              "hispellumAmphitheatre"           
## [21] "albaFucensAmphitheater"           "sutriumAmphitheatre"             
## [23] "tiburAmphitheater"                "telesiaAmphitheatre"             
## [25] "urbisagliaAmphitheater"           "assisiAmphitheatre"              
## [27] "mactarisAmphitheater"             "sanBenedettoDeiMarsiAmphitheater"
## [29] "monteleoneAmphitheater"           "bolsenaAmphitheater"             
## [31] "ascoliPicenoAmphitheater"         "beneventoAmphitheater"           
## [33] "calviRisortaAmphitheater"         "sanVittorinoAmphitheater"        
## [35] "capuaRepublicanAmphitheater"      "capuaImperialAmphitheater"       
## [37] "liternoAmphitheater"              "noleAmphitheater"                
## [39] "noceraSuperioreAmphitheater"      "aquinoAmphitheater"              
## [41] "seressiAmphitheater"              "chemtouAmphitheater"             
## [43] "sidiBouArkoubAmphitheater"        "genzanoPrivateAmphitheater"      
## [45] "ainHedjahAmphitheater"            "uticaAmphitheater"               
## [47] "tebourbaAmphitheater"             "hencherElKasbatAmphitheater"     
## [49] "hencherZembraAmphitheater"        "bullaRegiaAmphitheater"          
## [51] "pupputAmphitheater"               "siccaVeneriaAmphitheater"        
## [53] "thibariAmphitheater"              "statiliusTaurusAmphitheater"     
## [55] "carpisAmphitheater"               "faleriiNoviAmphitheater"         
## [57] "teramoAmphitheater"               "ordonaAmphitheater"              
## [59] "bevanaAmphitheater"               "minturnaeAmphitheater"           
## [61] "sinuessaAmphitheater"

Mapping Degree

Plotting Degree

Distance to Road

http://darmc.harvard.edu/

Counting Seats Near Roads

Seats Near “Major” Cities

… and Riots

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Pompeian_mural_depicting_the_Amphitheatre_riots.jpg

Blatant Eye Candy?